2 weekends ago, I attended a workshop with Amy Beegle from Cincinnati Consevatory of Music. It was a great! I got a lot of new ideas and was re-introduced to the Afro-Peruvian Music I posted about last year!
We started with some simple warm-ups to warm-up our hearts, voices, bodies and minds. We stretched, breathed, counted. Etc.
We also did a new greeting chant that I loved that can alternate with the Hello song that I currently use to introduce many ways to say Hello in my class.
The chant goes: Sorida, Que Pasa? Aloha. Guten Tag! Shalom, Good Day, Konichiwa, Paka!
Students learn the chant and identify the languages and then put the beat in their feet and walk around the room while speaking. The 2nd time through, students find a partner and tap hands, elbows, or other body parts (whatever teacher calls out) to the beat with a partner. Then repeat! Very fun game.
We then had story time where we read a great book called: The Way to Start a Day by Byrd Baylor.
The book talks about how different cultures start the day using music.
After we read it once we were taught a mixed meter song by Amy and used it in a performance of the story. To help with the mixed meter we used partners and said the word "beautiful" for the 3 meter and "sunrise" for the two meter. She then led us to the ABAC pattern of the song she wrote. (3 2 3 2, 3 3 2 2, 3 2 3 2, 3 3 3 3). Many other songs could be used that are about a sunrise, greeting each other how music is important in our lives, etc. After we learned the song and read the story, Amy had various phrases of the book that we were to act out in groups using voices, sounds, and movement and the song was sung twice through-out. I cannot wait to use this in 4th grade for our multi-cultural show this spring!
After this we moved onto the Afro-Peruvian Music. See HERE for more info, as this section was very similar to her workshop at OMEA last year.
After our second break, read another story, Smokey Night by Eve Bunting ,
which was about the LA Riots. To go along with the story we sung another song. For this one, Amy wrote the text (A- Jasmine, Jasmine, you are my only cat. Jasmine, Jasmine, where can you be? Jasmine, Jasmine, you are my only cat. Jasmine, Jasmine, come back to me B-Where did you find her, under the stairway, How can I thank you, Just let it be! [in high and low voices to represent the boy and the fire-fighter]) to an example from Music For Children (Book 1, page... #2) Orff instruments got the chance to accompany the A section of the song, and then for the B we did some instrumental improve in family groups (glockenspiels, metals, woods, small percussion, recorders, etc.) The B Section was a question/ answer so the improve happened in pairs where one did the question (any thing they wanted in pentatonic) and the answer did anything as well with only one rule: that they had to end on our home tone do (in this case we were in the key of C).
Next we did a little of Chicken on a Fence Post and had some fun improvising in Rondo form. Some students played a bordun while singing, then other people made a line behind a conga to improvise for the B section, (and C, and D, and E, etc). This was prepared by giving each type of rhythm in the song a new word (Crow, Chicken, Cock-a-doo-dle for ta, ti-ti, and tika-tika) and figuring out the rhythm of the song, then improvising on those words using body percussion. Only when most students are successful with the length of phrases, number of beats, etc did she bring people to the instruments. I am most excited about bringing this one back to my 3rd grade class because I just presented Tika-tika last week and it is a great way to extend practice! I have also used this same format in other classes since the workshop- fourth grade is doing the same type of activity with tika-ti.
Finally we had a goodbye song which Amy learned from one of her 5th graders.
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